The present invention relates to an improved method for culturing and cultivating fungi.
Hitherto, the mushroom such as Lentinus edodes has been cultivated by inoculating mushroom fungi into a host wood with a diameter of 10 cm or above and a length of about 100 cm, allowing to stand the inoculated host wood under suitable conditions until the hyphae grow and spread in the host wood and growing or cultivating the mushroom. Such a host wood is available with difficulty due to the fact that the supply of the wood with the diameter of more than 10 cm cannot be overtaken with its excessive demand. And, the wood with the diameter of less than 10 cm, especially less than 7 cm is unsuitable as the host wood since the regulation of the moisture, which is the very important factor in the culture of the fungi, is very difficult and always failed, thereby the fungi inoculated in the host wood cannot be cultured satisfactorily and successfully because of the lack of moisture.
The use of sawdust instead of the host wood in the above method has been proposed and practically effected on the industrial scale. As mentioned above, the culture conditions, for example, the temperature, humidity, light and so on are required to be carefully regulated for culturing the fungi and this requirement is, of course, applied to in the culture method using the sawdust as the culture medium.
For easily and successfully regulating the culture conditions whose regulation is very difficult and troublesome the use of a plastic bag having a porous site has been proposed by the present inventor (Japanese Patent Publication No. 42287/82). That is, this method comprises
(a) introducing a culture medium which mainly consists of the sawdust into the plastic bag having the porous site; PA0 (b) sterilizing the bag; PA0 (c) inoculating the fungi into the medium; and PA0 (d) sealing the bag and culturing the fungi. PA0 (1) the conditions are successfully regulated during the culture of the fungi. In particular, the evaporation of the moisture is only a little; PA0 (2) the suitable volume of air is supplied to the culture medium; PA0 (3) the specific technics are unnecessary for the culture of the fungi; and PA0 (4) the mushroom can be cultivated in very short period (some months), although at least some years are necessary until the harvest in the prior culture and cultivation method.
The characteristics of the above-mentioned culture method are to use the plastic film having the porous site which acts to prevent the culture medium from contaminating with the unacceptable bacteria while supplying air in an amount necessary and sufficient for the growing of the fungi to the culture medium. Owing to the characteristics, the above-mentioned method has the following advantages and is highly evaluated:
There are two important demerits derived from the use of the sawdust as the culture medium in the abovementioned method, however, although it has many advantages. One is that the grade in quality of the harvested mushroom is lower as compared with that of the mushroom harvested by using the host wood as the culture medium. The other is that the sawdust amount is not enough to meet its demand and accordingly to use the sawdust as the culture medium, it is necessary to take a special time and cost for making the sawdust.
An object of the present invention is to dissolve the above-mentioned demerits without impairing the advantages in the culture and cultivation method using the plastic bag having the porous site.
Another object of the present invention is to provide the culture and cultivation method using as the culture medium the wood with the diameter of less than 10 cm which had been thrown away as the worthless until now.
Another object of the present invention is to provide the mushroom with high grade in quality.
These and other objects of the present invention will be apparent from the following descriptions.